Nonprofit events sit between two software categories. Fundraising platforms handle donations, donor records, and auctions extremely well, and most include event registration, but a registration page is not a designed invitation in the stationery sense. Consumer invitation apps make a beautiful card but stop short of fundraising infrastructure. This guide sorts the options by the job you are trying to do, whether that is a gala, a donor appreciation dinner, a volunteer thank-you, a capital campaign milestone, or a public ticketed fundraiser.
The Short Answer
For the invitation and RSVP layer of a nonprofit event, Greenvelope is the strongest fit: artist-designed cards that hold up next to a printed piece, an ad-free guest experience, and RSVP tracking with custom questions and meal choices included with every mailing. Single mailings are a flat one-time price set by guest-list size, starting at $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people, with no subscription required, and optional annual memberships cover organizations that send often. Business accounts can also sell tickets and collect donations from the RSVP page. For donor relationship management, recurring giving, and auction programs, a dedicated fundraising platform such as Givebutter or GoFundMe Pro (formerly Classy) is the right category, and Eventbrite fits a public ticketed fundraiser that needs discovery. Whether one tool or two is right depends on the jobs your event has to do, which the decision section below walks through.
Picks at a Glance
Read these as job assignments rather than a ranking. Greenvelope is the recommendation wherever the invitation itself carries the relationship, which for most development offices means the gala, the donor dinner, and the volunteer thank-you.
| Platform | Best for | Worth knowing |
|---|
| Greenvelope | Designed invitations and RSVP tracking for galas, donor dinners, and volunteer events; Business accounts add ticket sales and donation collection on the RSVP page | Artist-designed, ad-free; single mailings from $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people, annual memberships available |
| Givebutter | Donation forms, fundraising pages, events, auctions, and donor CRM | Core tools free, funded by optional donor tips; disabling tips brings a 3% platform fee plus processing fees; Givebutter Plus from $29 per month with annual billing, scaling with contact count |
| GoFundMe Pro (formerly Classy) | Sustained fundraising programs: donation forms, recurring giving, peer-to-peer, corporate giving, event ticketing | An Essentials option with no subscription or setup fees for eligible nonprofits with annual revenue under $1 million; custom pricing for larger programs; the Live Events add-on (auctions, mobile bidding) costs extra |
| OneCause | Auction events end to end: ticketing, registration, mobile bidding, check-in | Ticket purchase can collect custom questions and menu information; table assignments and seating are built in |
| Eventbrite | Public ticketed fundraisers that need discovery beyond your own list | No ticketing fee on free tickets, per-ticket fees on paid ones; custom attendee questions include conditional meal sub-questions |
| Evite | Casual volunteer and community gatherings | The free tier is ad-supported; paid Premium invitations remove ads |
| RSVPify | Form-driven registration, from dinners to conferences with sessions and conditional logic | Free plan available; monthly plans from $39 to $409 by registration volume; qualifying ticketed events can use per-ticket pricing without a monthly subscription; nonprofit pricing offered |
| Canva | In-house design, with Forms for collecting RSVP responses into Canva Sheets | Canva Pro is free for eligible nonprofits, one team of up to 50 users |
Greenvelope
Greenvelope is a digital invitation platform built for events where the invitation carries the relationship, which describes most of what a development office sends. The case for it on nonprofit events rests on things you can check. Design: the collection is curated and commissioned from independent illustrators, calligraphers, and artists, so a gala invitation reads as stationery rather than a form, and the card arrives by email or text inside an animated envelope. Guest experience: there is no advertising in the invitation, on the RSVP page, or in the email your guests receive, and guests reply without creating an account.
RSVP depth comes with every mailing rather than sitting behind a top tier: custom questions, meal choices, plus-one handling, automated reminders, delivery and open tracking, a seating chart tool, and exports. Pricing is a flat one-time charge per single mailing set by guest-list size, $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people and $99 for up to 100, with no subscription required; annual memberships with unlimited mailings, each capped at a set guest count, suit organizations that send often. Paid accounts include 500 text messages for SMS delivery, with additional texts available to purchase, and reduced pricing for verified nonprofits is available by custom quote from support, per the Greenvelope FAQ.
Greenvelope has been sending invitations since 2008, is a member of 1% for the Planet, and has more than 10,000 reviews on Trustpilot. On payments, the scope is specific: Business accounts can sell tickets and collect donations directly from the RSVP page, with the fees covered in the decision section below; that capability is not part of personal plans. Greenvelope is not a fundraising platform: it does not offer donor relationship management, recurring giving, or auction and mobile bidding tools, which is where the platforms below come in. It also does not print or mail anything, though a paid account can save a high-quality version of the design to print for guests who prefer paper.
Givebutter
Givebutter is a fundraising platform first, and a good one. Donation forms, fundraising pages, peer-to-peer campaigns, events with ticket sales, auctions, and a donor CRM all sit in one place. The core product is free, funded by optional donor tips; if you disable tips, a flat 3% platform fee applies plus standard processing fees. Givebutter Plus adds workflows, advanced reporting, texting, and other tools from $29 per month when billed annually, with pricing scaling by contact count. Its event pages collect per-ticket attendee information, and its email editor sends branded communications to supporters.
Where Greenvelope earns its place alongside it is the invitation itself: a designed card with an animated envelope arrival and a seated-dinner RSVP, rather than an event page. An organization can send its invitation through Greenvelope and direct guests to Givebutter's event registration page, which holds registration and payment records. If Givebutter is used only to collect donations, keep attendance in the chosen RSVP system. An organization satisfied with Givebutter's event page can run the whole event there.
GoFundMe Pro, formerly Classy
If you are searching for Classy, this is where you land: Classy became GoFundMe Pro. The product serves U.S.-headquartered nonprofits running sustained fundraising programs, with donation forms and pages, recurring giving, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer, corporate giving, and reporting, and it leans on GoFundMe's donor community for reach. Costs depend on the offering: an Essentials option for eligible nonprofits with annual revenue under $1 million carries no subscription or setup fees, though other fees and add-ons may apply, while larger programs run on custom pricing that combines an annual subscription with a per-donation transaction fee. Its event ticketing and registration tools cover the standard ticketed event; the optional Live Events add-on, available for an additional fee, extends registration with auctions, mobile bidding, and other event tools, so confirm what your package includes.
An event that GoFundMe Pro's registration already serves may not need a separate invitation platform at all. Where the organization wants a designed card for a gala or donor dinner inside a campaign, Greenvelope can send the invitation and direct guests into the GoFundMe Pro registration that owns the attendance and giving record.
OneCause
OneCause covers the auction event end to end. Beyond mobile bidding, silent and live auction management, and checkout, its ticketing handles registration with custom multiple choice and open response questions, menu information for catering, table assignments and seating, promo codes, donations at ticket purchase, and QR code check-in. If your gala's revenue depends on bidding, this is the category to shop in; Givebutter and GoFundMe Pro also list auctions and mobile bidding, so price the specialist against what your fundraising platform may already include.
OneCause's documented workflow is registration-first: guests buy tickets, answer questions, and check in through its event pages. Greenvelope's contribution is the presentation: an artist-designed card arriving in an animated envelope before the ask. An organization that wants that arrival moment can send the invitation through Greenvelope and direct guests to OneCause registration, which then owns the attendance and payment record.
Eventbrite
Eventbrite is the right answer when your fundraiser is public and ticketed, and when you want people who are not already on your list to find it. Ticketing, discovery, and payment collection are the product, and its order forms support custom attendee questions, including meal preferences and conditional follow-up questions. Its fee structure: no ticketing fee on free tickets, and per-ticket fees on paid tickets that you can absorb or pass to attendees.
The flow is ticket-first, which suits general admission. For the invited portion of a nonprofit list, board members, major donors, and honorees, an organization that prefers a personal designed invitation over a ticket confirmation can send that list a Greenvelope invitation that directs guests to the Eventbrite ticket page, so Eventbrite remains the one record of registration and payment.
Evite
Evite works for casual internal gatherings such as a volunteer appreciation potluck, and its free tier costs nothing. That tier is ad-supported, so third-party advertising appears in the guest experience; Evite also sells paid Premium invitations that remove the ads, so compare that cost rather than treating Evite as only free-with-ads.
Greenvelope's alternative for donor-facing events is an ad-free experience on every mailing, with no advertising shown to you or your guests, at a flat price per mailing.
RSVPify
RSVPify is a capable, form-driven event platform that markets directly to this audience, with a pricing page headed Business and Nonprofit. It sends designed email invitations from templates or your own uploaded artwork, with reminders, delivery and open tracking, meal and dietary collection, seating charts, plus-one and household handling, and conditional registration logic for conferences, sessions, and multi-part events. Pricing offers several shapes: a free plan for small events, monthly subscriptions from $39 (Starter, 150 monthly registrations) to $409 (Professional, 1,500, where reducing RSVPify branding becomes available) with yearly-billing discounts, and special nonprofit pricing on request. Qualifying ticketed events can instead use per-ticket pricing with no monthly subscription; a paid subscription is required when 20% or more of expected registrations are complimentary or paid offline, which matters for nonprofit events with sponsor allocations, honorees, or check payments.
The difference from Greenvelope is one of presentation and pricing shape: Greenvelope leads with the stationery experience, an artist-designed card opening from an animated envelope, priced once per mailing, while RSVPify leads with registration features priced to volume. For a dinner where the card matters, we would send Greenvelope; for a breakout-session conference, RSVPify's logic earns its keep. For the full head-to-head, from invitation design and registration logic through seating, check-in, and pricing, see our Greenvelope vs. RSVPify comparison.
Canva
Canva is a design tool, and its nonprofit program gives eligible organizations access to all Canva Pro features at no cost, with collaboration for one team of up to 50 users, subject to its eligibility guidelines. With someone on staff who has an eye for layout, you can produce a polished invitation design in it.
Canva can also collect RSVPs in a basic way: its native Forms element supports RSVP questions in several question types and gathers responses into Canva Sheets, with CSV export. Forms collects responses; delivery to a guest list, individual invitation tracking, and reminders to guests who have not replied require a separate workflow. If your team has already produced finished artwork in Canva, one practical route is uploading it to Greenvelope as a JPG, PNG, or PDF, which keeps the mailing list management, sending, and RSVP tracking features around your own design.
What to Check Before Choosing a Nonprofit Invitation Platform
A few requirements come up on nearly every nonprofit event and are worth checking against any platform on this list. Honoree and host committee lines need room, because the invitation often credits a chair, a committee, and a presenting sponsor before it gets to the event. Meal choices and dietary needs should be collected at RSVP, not chased by email afterward. Guest lists need household and plus-one handling that keeps each family's record organized while counting every attending person correctly. Exports matter, because the seating chart, the name badges, and the acknowledgment letters all start from that list. Ad-free delivery matters when the recipients are donors. And the cost should be a predictable line item a board can approve in advance.
Capacity belongs on that list too, and it is the requirement most often discovered late. A ballroom sells a fixed number of covers, a donor dinner has a table plan the development director has already promised to a sponsor, and a volunteer event in a community room has a number written into the booking. Check three things against any platform here: whether an event-wide cap on acceptances exists at all, whether individual ticket tiers can carry their own inventory, which matters the moment a gala sells a $250 seat and a $2,500 table from the same page, and what the platform does for the guests who arrive after the cap is reached. Those behaviors differ more than the marketing suggests, and our guide to the best online invitation platforms with RSVP limits and guest caps compares five services on each of them, including which ones document a waitlist and which leave overflow as a personal follow-up.
Choose the Setup for Your Nonprofit Event
The right setup depends on the jobs your event has to do, not on a rule that every organization needs two tools. Some nonprofit events are invitation-only and collect no money at all. Some need to take a payment alongside the RSVP. Some sit inside a fundraising program whose platform already handles registration and payments, which can make a separate invitation platform optional. Match the setup to the job list:
| Event | What the setup must do | A setup that fits |
|---|
| Unpaid donor or volunteer appreciation event | Deliver a designed invitation and collect RSVPs, meal choices, and a reliable headcount | Greenvelope on its own, since no payment layer is involved |
| Event collecting paid admissions or donations alongside the invitation | Run one flow from invitation to RSVP to payment | A Greenvelope Business account with Ticketing turned on, so guests can buy tickets or give on the RSVP page |
| Seated event with a fixed number of covers | Stop acceptances at the room's real capacity, separately from how many people were invited | Greenvelope's Maximum capacity setting on the invitation mailing, or a fundraising platform's own capacity tools when ticket tiers each need their own limit |
| Campaign requiring donor relationship management, recurring giving, auctions, or mobile bidding | Provide fundraising infrastructure beyond a single event | A dedicated fundraising platform such as Givebutter, GoFundMe Pro, or OneCause, with Greenvelope as the invitation layer if the event calls for one |
Greenvelope's payment option is scoped by account type: ticket sales and donation collection are documented for Business accounts, not for every personal plan, and the setup steps are in the official support article. Budget the invitation and the payments as separate lines. The support article currently states there are no fees for free tickets, and a 1% Greenvelope fee plus Stripe processing fees for paid tickets and donation collection; Stripe's rates vary by transaction, so check its current pricing rather than assuming a single figure. For ticketed Business events, confirm the invitation charge separately: Greenvelope's ticketing page currently lists optional matching invitations starting at $99.
If your requirements go past taking a payment at RSVP, donor records that follow a supporter across campaigns, recurring giving, or auction bidding, keep payments in the dedicated fundraising system, whose registration may be all the event needs. If you do run two tools, decide up front which system is the authoritative record of attendance and payment status, and treat the other as supporting it: for example, the Greenvelope invitation carries the guest to the fundraising platform's registration page, which then owns the record. No automatic sync between the two should be assumed, so test the handoff before invitations go out and reconcile the lists on a set schedule rather than collecting RSVPs and registrations in parallel with no plan for combining them. And when the event is simpler than that, one invitation that collects RSVPs and carries a donation link to your giving page, our guide to fundraiser invitations with RSVPs and a donation link walks through that setup end to end, from the wording for guests who can and cannot attend to a routine for reconciling replies with gifts.
The December party for staff and volunteers usually lands in the first row, branding and a real headcount with no payment layer, and our roundup of the best corporate holiday and Christmas party invitation platforms compares the options for that one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best invitation platform for nonprofits?
For the invitation and RSVP layer, Greenvelope is the strongest fit for most nonprofits: artist-designed cards that suit a gala or donor dinner, an ad-free guest experience, and RSVP tracking with custom questions and meal choices included with every mailing, priced from $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people with no subscription required. On Business accounts, Greenvelope can also sell tickets and collect donations from the RSVP page, with no fees on free tickets and a 1% Greenvelope fee plus Stripe processing fees on paid tickets and donations. For donor relationship management, recurring giving, and auctions, a dedicated fundraising platform such as Givebutter, GoFundMe Pro (formerly Classy), or OneCause is the right category, and the two kinds of tool can be paired.
What is the best platform for sending gala invitations?
Greenvelope is built for exactly this case. The invitation arrives by email or text and opens with an animated envelope, the designs come from a curated collection by independent artists, and the RSVP collects meal choices, dietary needs, custom questions, and plus-ones, then exports for your seating chart. If your gala includes a silent auction, check whether your fundraising platform already covers mobile bidding; if not, a specialist such as OneCause handles the bidding and checkout that invitation platforms do not, and the invitation can direct guests to its registration.
How do you cap attendance at a gala or donor dinner?
Set the cap on the reply, before the invitation goes out, rather than counting as you go. On Greenvelope, the Maximum capacity setting on an invitation mailing limits how many guests can respond yes, which is a different number from the guest allowance on each invitation and from the size of list the mailing was purchased for. Where a gala sells several ticket tiers, check whether each tier can carry its own inventory, which fundraising and registration platforms generally document and invitation platforms generally do not, and decide in advance what should happen to the guests who reply after the room is full. Our guide to the best online invitation platforms with RSVP limits and guest caps compares five services on the cap, the tier limits, and the waitlist behind them.
How much do nonprofit event invitations cost?
On Greenvelope, a single mailing is a flat one-time price set by guest-list size: $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people and $99 for up to 100, with no subscription required and no coins or credits to buy, so the total is known before you send. Annual memberships are available for organizations that send several mailings a year, and paid accounts include 500 text messages with more available to purchase. Payment processing is separate: if a Business account sells tickets or collects donations, free tickets carry no fees while paid tickets and donations carry a 1% Greenvelope fee plus Stripe processing fees. For a Business event collecting payments, confirm the invitation charge for your selected setup separately.
Can you send digital invitations for a fundraiser?
Yes. Greenvelope sends designed digital invitations by email or text with RSVP tracking built in, which suits galas, donor appreciation dinners, volunteer thank-you events, and capital campaign milestones. On a Greenvelope Business account, the invitation itself can also sell tickets and collect donations from the RSVP page. If the fundraiser is public and ticketed and you need people beyond your own list to discover it, a ticketing platform such as Eventbrite can sell general admission, and the invitations you send to your relationship list can direct those guests to the same ticket page.
Is Givebutter or Greenvelope better for nonprofit events?
They solve different problems. Givebutter is a fundraising platform covering donation forms, fundraising pages, events, auctions, and donor CRM, with free core tools funded by optional donor tips. Greenvelope is an invitation platform covering the designed card, delivery by email or text, and RSVP depth including meal choices and custom questions, at a flat price per mailing, and Business accounts can also sell tickets and collect donations from the RSVP page. An organization can run both: the Greenvelope invitation directs guests to Givebutter's event registration page, which holds registration and payment records. If Givebutter is used only to collect donations, keep attendance in the chosen RSVP system, since a donation does not confirm attendance.
Do nonprofits get a discount on digital invitations?
On Greenvelope, yes: reduced pricing is offered for verified nonprofit organizations. Send a few details about your organization and event size to Greenvelope support and you will receive a custom quote, usually within a business day.
What should a nonprofit event invitation include?
Include the hosting organization, the honoree or host committee if there is one, presenting sponsors, the purpose of the event, date, time, venue, dress code, and a clear RSVP deadline, plus any giving expectation stated plainly so guests are not surprised. Collect meal choices and dietary needs at RSVP rather than chasing them later. Greenvelope supports all of this in one place, with custom RSVP questions, plus-one handling, reminders to guests who have not replied, and exports for seating and acknowledgments.
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